I am pretty much a self taught amateur soccer photographer. These are from a night time game in a football stadium. The light was good enough to use ISO 3200. I shoot in AV mode and for really poor lighting, I dial down the exposure a stop to get a manageably higher shutter speed. I then adjust exposure in post processing.

These were shot in Raw with post processing in Light Room. Noise reduction set to 59 and 47 for color.

I have been a member for a long time, but haven't uploaded in a long while. Hopefully upload is OK. I would like to improve my sports photography, so critique is really appreciated.

I don't know what your reasoning for the underexposure is. My experience (Also with a 1DIV among others) is that Canon sensors don't like underexposure. I Think that these are still a touch underexposed. Have you shot a game where you used your underexposure technique and then tried a regular exposure?
Also, for a night game, I would suggest shooting in manual unless the light varies too much from zone to zone on the playing field. White jerseys can fool a meter into underexposing.
Nice work,
Peter

Properly exposing and over exposing is always the best way to combat high iso noise. Under exposing and bringing it up in post will make it noisier. Counter acting that with noise reduction reduces detail.

Regarding my underexposure technique, I think shooting in manual would have been better in this stadium because the lights were pretty good and relatively consistent across the stadium, although in a lot of our stadiums the light varies significantly, particularly bad at the ends of the stadium.

And regarding my unconventional underexposure technique, here is my (perhaps flawed ) rationale, I shoot in Av mode at F 2.8. The camera picks the fastest shutter speed. So if the shutter speed is less than 1/640s, rather than going up on the iso to get a normal exposure and an acceptable shutter speed, I underexpose it a bit (1/3 stop to 1 stop), thus the camera picks a faster shutter speed and I still have my lower ISO. I will try it with normal exposure with the concomitant higher ISO and compare the two. Probably sticking with Manual would be better.

Regardless, I do think the photos lack some sharpness, probably, at least in part, because of my noise reduction treatment. I appreciate the feedback.

For high ISO images with noise, do y'all use Lightroom for the correction, or do you recommend a specialty software product like Noise Ninja to address the noise? Which do you like better?

From experience on poorly lit high school soccer fields, the Mk IV can do a good job even at ISO 6400. If you can nail the exposure, I get lucky once in a while even ISO 10800 can work. Obviously noise reduction is definitely needed but the results can be pretty good when not under exposed. All of this to say, I've always found it better to try and nail the exposure with this body vs push it in PP via LR. LR's noise reduction works fine.

I used to use noise ninja but their move to photo ninja and no plug in for PS ruined it for me. I use Nik Dfine 2.0 now. It seems to do a good job but i haven't mastered it yet so I have to refrain from giving an opinion. LR4 works well from what I hear. It is sitting idle on my computer.

Nice framing and you did a good job capturing the action. On the exposure/settings, I agree with what the other folks have said. With consistent light I'd probably shoot in manual mode. Ignoring that though, I'm not where nearly as experienced as other folks here but I've found that I'm usually okay to freeze soccer with 1/1000 shutter speed. On your third shot for instance you had 1/1600 so could have given up some speed to increase the exposure without (probably) impacting the image. The only time I'd intentionally under expose is if I was maxed out on ISO and it was the only way to get the shutter speed I needed. And frankly, if that's the situation I'm probably wasting my time anyway as I'm not going to like the shots.

I used to shoot aperture priority for sports working under essentially the same assumption you had -- that will maximize my shutter speed and that's good. I've switched to either using shutter priority or aperture priority with nikon's auto iso settings being used to manage the shutter speed. (if I can't use manual)

I'm confident that the dedicated solutions handle noise reduction better than lightroom but I've never taken the time to look into any of them -- LR is just too convenient. (lazyness on my part) The settings you showed are pretty high so it's definately possible that's whats caused the softness in a few of the images.